Walk into a home-loan office and ask if "overages" are charged, and veteran officers will immediately begin coughing or winding their watches.

Younger representatives would have to be told that an overage is a creative manipulation of a loan’s yield-spread premium, or YSP.

Some lenders deliberately take advantage and charge significantly more for a loan than is necessary. The practice was commonly known in the industry as an "overage," yet that was only one of its definitions.